healing with “aloe”

July 12, 2017

Dealing with anxiety is never easy. After grappling with GAD (generalized anxiety disorder) most of my life, and hearing a million and one opinions on how to ~best treat it~, I’ve grown to know what works for me and what doesn’t. So pro-tip from a veteran: self care check-ins are really awesome.

For those of you with me on the anxiety train, you know there’s some days where every molehill feels like a mountain. There’s moments where even getting out of bed is a struggle because all you can think about is the huge to-do list awaiting you…so your mind just annoyingly shuts down. It’s on those kind of days where help is best served in slow, little steps. And check-ins (via either an app, a site, or just your diary) can help. The idea is that by answering pre-set questions about how you’re feeling that very moment, you can be gently guided through what little steps you can take to make yourself feel better.

Check ins give active improvement.

Now Aloe (and its parent site, Femsplain) by no means created the idea of the check-in. But what I love about the tool in general is that I find it so much more helpful than some vague advice article on the internet. Someone telling you to “just relax” is a lot less useful than, say, Aloe’s breathing exercise graphic at the end of the quiz. With the check-in you’re getting concrete results and better self awareness. I feel a bit more accomplished each time I do one, and sometimes you just need that little kinda win in your day.

There’s a nice selection of questions.

While most online check-ins ask a lot of the same questions (have you gotten good sleep, drank enough water, etc) Aloe’s has some cute and handy variations. I liked how it made a point to ask about taking vitamins / meds and even if you’d brushed your teeth. Honestly, it’s the smaller things like that that can fall through the cracks. And having the mood selector based on cute flower emojis was a tiny, but adorable, detail.

They have a virtual “interactive garden” on Twitter!

Ok, this one is totally random and not even related to the check-in itself, but I thought the Twitter garden was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. Basically, people in the Aloe community tweet certain emojis to “water” little pixel plants and slowly watch them “grow” as the garden image gets updated every couple days. And I have no idea why this is so satisfying. But it totally is. The account is also great in general as they like to tweet out various uplifting messages and kinds of mini check-ins. But I’ll be honest…those pixel flowers are the best thing I’ve seen on the internet this week. Ugh. So cute.

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So next time you’re anxious, go ahead and use Aloe to break down your big anxieties into small, manageable pieces! And bonus points if you send a few cute flowers my way. 🌸 🌼🌸

UPDATE: After a successful Kickstart, the Aloe is now becoming an app! Keep an eye out for it in the Apple Store~